The price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) has soared to over N1300, reflecting a staggering 430% increase in just 17 months.
The Socialist Workers League (SWL) has pledged to resist the Nigerian government’s neo-liberal policies, while condemning the planned increase in fuel pump prices to over N1300 under the President Bola Tinubu-led administration.
The price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) has soared to over N1300, reflecting a staggering 430% increase in just 17 months.
The escalation in fuel costs, the SWL argued, is not just a financial burden but a direct assault on the already struggling populace, with over 130million Nigerians living below the poverty line.
In a statement released on Friday by Kunle “Wizeman” Ajayi through the national chairperson, Amara Nwosu, the League criticised the ongoing fuel price hikes and the removal of fuel subsidies as integral components of a neo-liberal agenda that primarily benefits a select few.
“The persistent increases in fuel prices are not merely economic adjustments; they are deliberate attacks on the wellbeing and livelihood of working people,” Ajayi asserted.
“The neoliberal agenda driven by international financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF, alongside local capitalists such as Dangote, serves to entrench capitalist interests while undermining the majority.”
Ajayi also accused the government of misleading the public by claiming that savings from subsidy removals would be reinvested in social services.
“We have been hearing these empty promises for decades, dating back to the structural adjustment programs of the mid-1980s. Instead of relief, we have only seen continuous price hikes and worsening living conditions,” he said.
The statement read, “It is thus not surprising that over the same seventeen months, the cost of living crisis in the country has worsened with geometric progression. Cost of living inflation is already over 40%. The poor masses can hardly breath; hunger has become our daily companion. This is unacceptable.
“The rich keep getting richer and the poor people remain perennially poor. Government officials receive huge amounts of money as allowances, buy yachts and aeroplanes with billions of naira. Meanwhile; poverty rates are increasing, unemployment is soaring and the hardship facing us has become unbearable.”
It said, “This widespread hardship led to a wave of spontaneous protests in February and March. It also inspired the recent #EndBadGovernance wave of protests between August and the beginning of October. We cannot overemphasise the need to deepen resistance to the neoliberal policies and capitalist forces that have put us in this state of anguish.”
Ajayi noted that the social force with the greatest structural power to challenge the government and force it to back down from the fuel pump price increase and anti-people’s policies, in general, was the working class.
He said, “We all saw how in 2012, the entry of the trade union movement into the fightback against the sharp increase of fuel price by Goodluck Jonathan raised mass protests that had started spontaneously to the level of an uprising, forcing the government to make some a partial price reversal.
“And this explains why there have been calls on the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) to lead a fightback to reject the recent increase in fuel pump price.
“But we must go beyond this. Without pressures of workers’ power from below, it is unlikely that the NLC and TUC will do anything significantly different from what they have done since the 29 May 2023 “subsidy is gone” declaration, which is essentially nothing. An important lesson from the 2012 January Uprising is that, the trade unions were forced to take the action they took precisely because of such pressures from below.
“We urge rank-and-file workers and the mass of working people to rise and fight, and to put pressure on their trade unions’ and organisations’ leadership to stand firm and resist the neoliberal policies that have made our lives an unending hell.
“We are hungry; we are angry, and we must fight to overthrow the system that is the root cause of fuel pump price hikes and the generally pitiable state of our existence. Dare to struggle and dare to win,” he added.